NIH scientist coauthors study on COVID-19 social distancing in China

Epidemiological models based on COVID-19 data from China suggest that social distancing alone is sufficient to control the spread of the virus, according to the findings of a multinational research team including a representative from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"Our study provides evidence that the interventions put in place in Wuhan and Shanghai, and the resulting changes in human behavior, drastically decreased daily contacts, essentially reducing them to household interactions. This leads to a dramatic reduction of SARS-CoV-2 transmission," the authors wrote.

In addition to Cecile Viboud, PhD, a staff scientist in the Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies at the NIH's Fogarty International Center, study investigators hailed from China, Italy, and Northeastern University in Boston.

The team analyzed contact-survey data for Wuhan and Shanghai before and during the COVID19 outbreak and contact-tracing data from Hunan Province. Based on these data, they built a transmission model to study the impact of social distancing and school closure on virus transmission.

Daily contacts were reduced 7-8-fold during the COVID-19 social distancing period, with most interactions restricted to households. Compared with adults aged 15-64 years, children aged 14 years or younger were less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, while individuals older than 65 years were more susceptible.

The study, published by Science on April 29, also suggests that proactive school closures alone cannot fully prevent transmission but can reduce peak infection incidence by 40% to 60%. However, the authors note that school-aged children make up a much smaller percentage of the population in Shanghai (9.5%) than in China overall (mean 16.8%) and the United States (mean 19.7%).

Read the study: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/28/science.abb8001